


Day 1: Love Language

by fascinationex



Series: MEGASTAR-MAS 2020 [1]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Assassination, Bad people being bad together, M/M, Minor Character Death, Robogore, continuity puree, megastarmas 2020, sometimes a relationship is two giant machines and a murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:22:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28286919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex
Summary: If Starscream could beredirected, then perhaps Megatron's cruelties could be reserved for his enemies.
Relationships: Megatron/Starscream (Transformers)
Series: MEGASTAR-MAS 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072040
Comments: 13
Kudos: 86





	Day 1: Love Language

Starscream was offline for repairs. Again.

Quite a few repairs, as it happened. 

Hook had obsequiously come to attend him the very moment Megatron had dumped him onto a gurney, but that didn’t do much to disguise how plainly annoyed he was to be attending him at all. It was also clear that he was annoyed by the quality of the work he could do with what equipment he had. 

“Just do what you must to get him back online,” Megatron said at last, growing irritable as he listened to his complaints. 

“If I could only keep him a week—five days!” Hook wheedled. “We could try to fabricate—” 

“No. Today.” 

As if they could go a week without an active duty air commander. 

Neither Skywarp nor Thundercracker were temperamentally suited for the role. Even together, they were something between a stopgap and a catastrophe. And the rest of the air corps wasn’t to be contemplated. 

They needed Starscream, as much as the implied compliment to him pained Megatron. 

…Since when had implied compliments to Starscream made Megatron feel so wrong-footed, anyway? 

He knew intellectually it had been some time since Starscream could be trusted with the smallest of compliments—they ended up thrown back in his face, later, inevitably—but he wasn’t absolutely certain when that had happened. Those memories were well and truly archived, now. 

Hook made a frustrated noise. “As you command.” Then, “Megatron, if I might suggest—” 

There was an uncomfortable, staticky hesitation. 

“What,” growled Megatron. 

“...supplies at the moment are limited,” said Hook delicately. “Although I’m sure Starscream’s— _provocations_ —are extensive, perhaps—” 

He quailed when Megatron turned the full force of his burning optics upon him. 

“You question how I choose to mete out discipline?” he asked softy. 

Hook shut his mouth with a click of teeth. His vocaliser cut off with a click, then restarted, uncomfortably shrill. 

“No, Megatron. Of course not,” he said, right through his teeth. 

He went back to his work on Starscream’s unmoving body without further comment, leaning in close to examine the minute circuitry behind his optics. He’d taken a few blows to the head, Megatron remembered dimly. It had been something of a blur. His hands flexed. 

“Just get him online, Hook. He has a raid to run.” He’d be sneering at the medic’s work and fixing himself the moment he was conscious anyway. 

“Of course,” muttered Hook. 

Megatron eyed the transparasteel of Starscream’s cockpit, spiderwebbed over in cracks. The lines caught the light oddly, gleaming here, shadowed there. 

“If he’d stop trying to assassinate me for half a second he might not be wasting so many of your supplies,” Megatron said at last, which was as close to an acknowledgement as the complaint would ever receive. 

It used to happen every few centuries, and it had served both a personal and professional purpose: a dangerous game that kept them both sharp, that showed off Starscream’s skills and creativity in that field—Megatron had always admired his flair for murder—and once upon a time it had served as a litmus test for Megatron’s support among his followers, too. 

Lately, however, Starscream had been declaring himself leader of the Decepticons… more often. He would pronounce Megatron dead after minor injuries and sometimes even _mild inconveniences_ , and he would make attacks that showed no skill or planning at all, only vicious and base ambition. Megatron had always enjoyed his vicious temper, but he was not entertained or flattered by assassination attempts rooted in opportunism and executed spontaneously, with any success left up to _blind chance_. 

As far as Megatron could tell, this was now just a vehicle for Starscream expressing his… frustrations. 

“Of that,” said Hook, “I have no doubt.” The thought didn’t seem to cheer him. 

Megatron shot one last glowering look at Starscream’s battered face. The very sight of it annoyed him—both Starscream’s face and the mess he’d made of it trying to dissuade him from such stupid ploys. He turned and left, feeling restless and unsettled. 

Behind him, Hook’s saw started up with a low grating buzz. 

* * *

The first time—ha, their _first time_ , Megatron thought, and he scoffed to himself privately at the idea. Was he becoming maudlin after all these millions of years? 

They used to say _nobody ever forgets their first_ , didn’t they? It meant the first mechanism with whom one merged sparks. Megatron had not heard that platitude in a long time. There weren’t really any more virgins to say it about—they hadn’t made new cybertronians for a long time, either. 

It was a lie, anyway. Megatron could remember spark merges, of course, but not which was his first. It had been easier, when everyone was younger and sweeter and had less reason to guard themselves so fiercely. 

But he remembered the first assassination. 

Oh, yes.

* * *

“It’s fine,” Starscream had said the moment Megatron arrived, a huge presence in a room not quite sized for his frame. 

Megatron remembered it very clearly. Starscream had those big bright lights, on either side of the big mirror. The way they lit his whole frame was merciless, always harsher than any light outside his rooms. 

He’d been peering at himself there, evidently furious with the crack in his optical lens. His voice had come out tense and furious, too. 

It had plainly not been fine. 

Megatron still remembered, faintly, the sense he’d felt—not of alarm, he never felt alarmed about injuries, exactly, as he had seen too many. But he had felt subtly violated, offended, a nagging feeling that his territory had been encroached upon. 

He remembered stepping up behind him and reaching around one broad, smeared wing to touch the dent in Starscream’s wrist plating. 

At the time, Starscream’s role had been different. He had access—minimal access, true, but access anyway—to the parties and soirees hosted by influential members of society, the kind who would never dream of attending a gladiatorial match in the pits. He could be counted upon to prove that the Decepticons, terrifyingly, had more than brute strength and will on their side: that they had some subtlety at their command, too. 

Megatron had struggled, at first, with the idea that Starscream floating about a glittering room gossiping could serve the cause, but it had. It was in a way Megatron wasn’t naturally given to understanding, but it had. 

It also put him in the unenviable position, sometimes, of being unable to retaliate to slights and insults immediately without losing face in public. Starscream hated feeling degraded, but there was nothing subtle about aggravated assault. 

“Do you want me to kill him for you?” Megatron had asked, mild as filtered low grade, touching him gently. The points of his claws scraped gently over the dents. 

“Who?” Starscream had said evenly. “Councillor Breaklight?” 

“Is that who did this?” It was good to have a name. 

“Yes.” Starscream had licked his teeth and went back to examining the optical crack. “And no. When he dies, I want him to be scared of _me_.” 

And this had made so very much sense to Megatron, so he had taken the statement at face value. He had squeezed his hand on the warm thrumming metal of Starscream’s wasp-sharp waist, and said, “If you bring me his head, we will set it somewhere to send a message, and use it as an object lesson for _his kind_.” 

Starscream had gone perfectly still, in the way of seekers and racers and fast vicious mechanimals, and then turned his head so his cracked red optic was looking directly at Megatron and not seeing him in the mirror’s glass. 

“I’ll make a note,” he’d promised, smiling. 

And so it had been decided. 

* * *

Later, Starscream had brought him a councillor’s grey helm, still caught in an expression of oil-leaking terror. He hadn’t been so practiced yet, and he’d made a terrible mess: energon on his hands and smeared down his cockpit, and, curiously, between the cracks of his teeth— 

“Yes. I’ve never seen it— _fountain_ , like that,” he’d admitted, running his tongue over them, optics distant as he explored the taste of energon fresh from another mechanism’s lines. 

Megatron had. Megatron had killed and killed and killed until the pit was soaked, until the crowd was glutted on it, until their screaming and cheering had fallen silent to fear, until their thirst for violence was finally slaked. 

But there was something about _Starscream_ —short, with his long delicate-looking fingers and tapering wings and sharp waist, his shiny polished plating and thin flexible armour. It was in the contrast between his deceptive delicacy and high-gloss finish, and the vicious character beneath it. 

His hands looked so precise and delicate on the councillor’s helm. Megatron had a crystal clear memory of it, photographic.

“Were you caught,” Megatron said, and then stopped talking, because Starscream had wanted to trace his slick, wet fingers over Megatron’s slack mouth, painting it with someone else’s fuel. 

His optics dimmed. If he couldn’t smell the reek of it, Megatron might have thought that syrupy slickness was another bodily fluid entirely. 

“Only by _you_ ,” Starscream said, confident and unconcerned. And _coy_. 

The very air had been ripe with the smell of spilled energon and heavy with charge. The head clanked to the floor when Megatron lifted him and took him bodily to the berth. 

The head was useful. And incriminating. 

But they’d dealt with it later.

And that had been the first.

* * *

Megatron mused on the memory file while he was supposed to be paying attention to Soundwave’s report. 

Soundwave already knew exactly what to do about the Autobots who were using human communications satellites to make a nuisance of themselves amid Decepticon interests in the other continents. He felt he benefited from reporting about it and having Megatron agree with him, Megatron assumed.

The problem of Starscream was weighty, though, and Soundwave would inevitably figure out the right entity to kill to solve their problem on his own. 

Starscream, Megatron thought, had always performed best when he had some challenging outlet for his _creativity_. 

“What was that again?” he asked, looking up. 

Soundwave paused in his report. 

Obligingly, he replayed the clip: 

The clip was from above, from a camera in some part of the ventilation system presumably, as captured by Laserbeak or Ravage on an intelligence run. 

It looked to Megatron as though they were in some kind of recreational area, with comfortable seating set closely together, but it was hard to tell—the Autobots’ base was extremely… orange. 

“ _I can’t modify my search light wavelength to reach a **satellite** , Huffer!_” snapped a red and purple minibot, clunking his shoulder against another. They were bickering about how best to disguise their signal from the humans who sold information to the Decepticons, Megatron gathered.

“Infrared,” he said slowly, reflecting. Infrared scanners weren’t useful in long distance applications for most cybertronians, but they could be tricky to work around if a mechanism needed to get in close. 

“Soundwave, I have every confidence in your plan—” 

Soundwave, who had not presented a plan, twitched. 

“—and there’s something else I must attend to.” 

He got up, already opening a comm line to the repair bay. _Hook_ , he demanded, _is Starscream online yet?_

If Starscream could be _redirected_ , then perhaps Megatron's cruelties could be reserved for his enemies.

* * *

Starscream was online. 

He was still in the repair bay, too. Sulking, which Megatron didn’t care about, and looking mutinously up at Megatron’s entry, which he sort of did care about. 

There had been a time when he had flexed his wings and smiled warily to see Megatron. It had been… some time ago. 

Megatron ignored that, too. 

“Starscream,” Megatron rumbled, ignoring his face and his recently-patched cockpit and his stiff, cranky wings. “I have a task for you.” 

“Of course, Megatron,” said Starscream, in a tone that Megatron’s processor translated to mean _‘I am going to take your spark out with a screwdriver the second your back is turned’_. 

_Stop that_ , Megatron wanted to sigh, and, _you’ll like this one._

He didn’t say any of these things. All he had had for Starscream, for millennia now, was rough warnings and glowering, finite tolerance and violence. 

He sent him the stills of the Autobot—“Gears”—a minibot with native infrared scanners and a disinclination towards battle. 

Leave them the body, he sent. Bring me the head, he sent. 

Remind them why they are never safe, he did not send, but he rather thought Starscream might have gotten the idea anyway, because he stopped sulking and lifted his wings. 

“Oh,” he said, soft in a way Megatron had not heard him in—millennia. 

“Am I understood, Starscream?” Megatron prompted. 

“Yes. You certainly are, Megatron.” 

* * *

By midday the following day Starscream had rearranged his own flight schedule. He dropped off the comms for a few hours, and then he returned. 

He left the Autobots the body, and he brought Megatron the head. 

The last time Megatron had seen Starscream so obedient and efficient was… 

Any occasion completely escaped him, actually. 

Gears’ head in robot mode was a particularly uncommon shape, set like a red hemisphere upon his shoulders. 

When Starscream landed back on the Victory, he unfolded from his jet mode and made his leisurely way across the ship to the command centre, dangling Gears’ detached head from the fingers of one hand. He scraped one of the stout protrusions of it along the wall of the corridor in a horrible _scree-ee-ee_ all the way, a macabre counterpoint to the _click click_ of his thrusters. 

He interrupted an admittedly tiresome report from the Stunticons when he entered, and Megatron held up a hand to forestall Motormaster’s inevitable loud protest. 

The head hadn’t gone grey yet. There was an art to avoiding the particular chemical reaction that killed off paint nanites, and Megatron had forgotten Starscream’s long efforts at practice. He remembered now, though, watching the puddled fuel leak in slow but steady dribbles from the optics. The air around Starscream and his grisly prize reeked of electrical discharge and fuel, and the old familiar smell of burning oils. 

Breakdown, avoiding Megatron’s gaze in Motormaster’s shadow, coughed into the quiet of the command centre. 

Other than his two pink hands, Starscream had avoided the fuel. He looked polished. 

“Motormaster, you can send the rest of your report in writing,” Megatron said. He didn’t take his gaze from Starscream. A fresh spatter of fuel drooled slowly from around Gears’ optic. 

There was a short, unhappy hesitation. 

Motormaster’s engine made a long, aggressive growl of protest. “Megatron—” 

“You’re dismissed—and you can hurry up, lest I make your dismissal a _permanent_ one.” 

The deep thrum of his fusion cannon filled the air. Even Motormaster wasn’t combative enough to stand his ground in the light of its glow. 

He got out, preceded by most of the stunticons and followed by Dead End, upon whom the threat of certain death never seemed terribly effective anyway. 

“And what about me, Megatron,” said Starscream, in a tone that said he knew very well Megatron’s optics hadn’t left him since he entered. Smug. Satisfied. “Am I not to be commended for my… contributions?” 

Megatron huffed softly through his vents. He was feeling an odd mix of pleasure and vindication and exasperation—and a strange nostalgic pride. 

“Show me, then,” he instructed, and let Starscream approach his seat in the command chair, right in the centre of the room. 

Starscream did, and then he lifted the head like an offering. There was a processor in there, battered, scorched and now marinating in the leaking energon of a hundred tiny lines cut clean through. That was the source of the smell, then. 

_:Soundwave:_ , he commed, _:have the Autobots become aware of any losses:_? 

_:Negative:_ , said Soundwave. 

< Which meant he was going to be able to comm Optimus Prime and show him the leaking, blank-faced memento, and watch his optics and his face as recognition and realisation dawned. 

As long as he did it fast, _Megatron_ could be the one to break this news. He felt positively giddy with this cruel pleasure. 

Good work, Megatron knew, was to be praised. He hesitated.

Then he didn't hesitate again:

“Ah, Starscream,” he purred, just as though he'd expected it. “Marvellous.” 

It was nearly automatic—it had _used_ to be automatic—just to to reach out and sweep him up with one big arm, right where his wings tapered at his waist, until he hit Megatron’s own plating with a quiet clank. Starscream was warm. His plating was alive and responsive and pleasant to touch. He was, compared to Megatron, small enough to pull in and clutch to his much bigger frame. 

More energon sloshed free from the head in Starscream’s hands at the sudden movement, spilling a long wet trail down one of his thighs. Megatron was not squeamish. If he had ever been squeamish, a few cycles down a mine shaft had cured him of it. He did not pretend to mind the lukewarm spill.

Starscream braced himself with his free hand on Megatron’s chest plates, leaving a single perfect hand print that just touched the Decepticon brand there. He used the leverage to make himself comfortable in his perch upon Megatron’s thigh. 

“Your work is exquisite.” As it always was, when he really put his mind to it. 

“Yes,” Starscream said, baldly egotistical, “it is. And what about it?” 

Megatron stroked a finger over the scarred transparasteel of his cockpit. Starscream wriggled pleasantly on his lap, smiling expectantly. 

It was a nice smile, for Starscream, narrow and entitled, yet inviting and hinting at all sorts of other appetites. But Megatron was aware of how quickly it would sour if those expectations weren’t met. 

Feeling obliging for once, he put out a commendation on the general comms. He knew when Starscream had seen it because the base of his wings moved against Megatron’s arm, and the air eddied with their sudden pleased fluttering. Starscream did so love to be publicly praised. 

_:Soundwave. Put a call through to Optimus Prime for me:_ , he sent then, looping Starscream in on the communication. 

Soundwave sent back an affirmative, and before them, the view screen blanked and then cut to a calling signal. Starscream kicked his thrusters, excited. 

_:Connecting,:_ Soundwave sent, perfectly neutral. 

_:Excellent,:_ said Megatron. _:It seems I’d like to **gloat** :_

Starscream laughed aloud at that, like he’d told a terrific joke. Like Megatron, he, too, was a cruel, savage thing. He wriggled enticingly in Megatron's grasp, plating flushed with warmth and all his many hungers, and his powerful jet engine turned over in anticipation. 

**Author's Note:**

> Day 1 of Megastarmas is Christmas Day, so have a good Christmas if you celebrate. (My celebration this year is just getting to spam everyone with fics for 12 days).
> 
> If you liked something I'd love to hear about it in a comment.


End file.
